A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton

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Oprah Daily ranked #1 of the best true crime books of all time.

A riveting narrative that pieces together the life and murder of Black socialite Lita McClinton Sullivanand the journey to bring her true killer to justice.

The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood, with its stately mansions and top-tier schools, was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight. How many socialites had enemies so dangerous they would be murdered by a hitman pretending to deliver roses on an early winter morning

Lita was an intelligent, accomplished, and stunning Black woman from a respected Atlanta family. Her interracial marriage to white millionaire Jim Sullivan, who hailed from working-class Boston, was a newsworthy occurrence in 1970s Georgia. For a while, the couple made the marriage work, but it wasnt long before Jims roving eye and controlling nature put Lita on edge. When he bought a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida (without telling her), the faade of their life together began to crumble. Finally, after a decade of marriage, she loaded her belongings in a U-Haul and never looked back.

But as the legal battle over the divorce raged and Jims financial outlook grew precarious, he had a chance encounter with a long-haul trucker, a smooth-talking ex-con who said he could hed "take care" of Jims wife problem. . . .

In A Devil Went Down to Georgia, award-winning writer Deb Miller Landau details the shocking events that followed Litas murder in 1987, including the surprising lack of evidence, racial bias in the justice system, and the international manhunt for Litas killer. Full of twists and turns, legal battles, and the McClinton familys unrelenting dedication to justice, Landau's rigorous investigation is the first complete account of this tragic American crime.

Reviews

"With a journalist's eye, a novelists vivid evocation of character, and some chilling interviews with the recently released hitman, Landau brings Lita to life on the pageand calls the people and forces responsible for her death to account." Oprah Daily, "Best Nonfiction True Crime Books of All time"

"A highly readable account of murder and systemic racism. This title is a compelling example of how to take stories that made headlines and find the deeper, more nuanced narrative strains that rarely come across in the media."

-- Library Journal, starred review

"Journalist Landau probes the killing of Atlanta socialite Lita McClinton in her riveting debut. Landau vividly conjures the casually racist world Lita inhabited with Sullivan, describing how she was ignored at parties in Palm Beach, Fla., and rankled Sullivans peers in Macon. Displaying a veterans knack for pacing, Landau peppers the narrative with cliff-hangers and vertigo-inducing twists. It adds up to a chilling and infuriating work of true crime." -- Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Deb Miller Landau first began investigating Lita McClinton Sullivan's murder for Atlanta Magazine in the early 2000s and has since become an authority on the case. Her article on the murder was anthologized in Harper Perennial's Best American Crime Writing, and her work has been cited by news stories and TV documentaries, including America's Most Wanted, Dateline, Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege & Justice, FBI: Criminal Pursuit and, most recently, Oxygen Network's 2022 Real Murders of Atlanta. Additionally, she appears as a primary on-screen expert in BET's 2019 docudrama, Murder in the Thirst.